This application requests funding for an international meeting entitled "Differentiation: New Perspectives" to be held September 20, 1988 in Oxford England. This meeting will be held under the sponsorship of the British Society for Cell Biology, the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (I.C.R.F.) and The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (D.F.C.I.). It will be organized by Dr. Fiona Watt of the I.D.R.F. and Dr. Bruce Spiegelman (P.I.) of the D.F.C.I. The meeting will bring together noted experts on cell differentiation from different perspectives. The problem of cell differentiation is central to our understanding of a wide variety of diseased states such as obesity, diabetes and cancer. We will have sessions on extracellular factors inducing differentiation (J. Smith, E. Eichele), early decisions in differentiation and determination (C. Emerson, H. Weintraub), cis- and trans-acting factors (R. Tjian, B. Nadal-Ginard, R. Goodbourn) and transgenic mice (H. Westphal, D. Solter). Our keynote speaker discussing future perspectives in cell differentiation research will be Dr. David Baltimore of M.I.T. By bringing together this group we hope to accomplish 2 things: (1) to encourage people to become familiar with the broad range of tools (cellular, molecular, animal) available to study differentiation and (2) to encourage collaborations that permit rapid movement between these different levels. In addition, we hope to provide students attending with an appreciation that the problems of cell differentiation must be attacked at multiple levels. This meeting will have a decidedly international flavor as t has strong American and Euorpean participation, as well as British and American sponsorship.